Vigilance and Tranquility, Honesty and awareness

Notes from class: Sight and body movement

It is easy to focus on something out of the norm. Notice the everyday things so your vision is not guided but floating.

Look forward and tense and relax different parts of your face. Note how tension and relaxing affects your sight and exhale to let go of excess.

Place one hand in front of you and play with height and distance from your eyes and see how best to cover a person in front of you and to your sides and how best to place your limbs to avoid obscuring your sight.

Move one hand in front of you and play with the movement. Go up and down and side to side and in circles and see what movements best obscure what is in front of you and what does not. Avoid thinking what you consider a constant will stay the same as you change with time and work. Get to know yourself everyday.

Walk around a partner while facing the same direction and note when you do see them and how they rise and fall in your horizon. Repeat the drill with different speeds and note how this affects in perception of what you see and what you see but do not notice.

Have a partner strike you with a fist. Move out of the way and return. Repeat the drill as you squat slowly until you are at the bottom and then rise slowly up again. Height changes our sight and it helps to play with it to bring it into our awareness.

Take an object you have with you everyday. It can be a book, a mobile phone ( I hear those are coming into popularity 🙂 ) or a backpack. Use it as you do everyday. For example, find you favorite passage in a book, and note what you still see and what is now not available in you line of sight. Play with it and see how to maximize your sight when you are using your device or tool. This can be the difference between life and death one day.

Repeat the previous drill and have a partner come at you in different ways as you work with your object. Every time you learn something, explain it to your partner so they can play with you even deeper and so both of you will learn much more. Communication must exist on more than one level to truly learn both self and the world.